by design
When I don’t offer an email address, it’s by design.
When I only offer an email address on my other blog, it’s by design.
No guestbook, no Letterbird, no Strawpage, no Tellonym, no Bluesky, no Mastodon, no Webmentions. Always by design.
When I use a niche blogging platform and don’t post myself elsewhere, it’s by design. When I hide myself from the feed, too.
Periodically I see people complain about how bad it is to be inaccessible and how you can’t burden other people by making it so hard to reach you or discover you. They’re like: Why can’t I just shoot a quick message into a guestbook?
But that is the point! I do not get being so starved for contact that you’d even let low effort bullshit and hate in to at least have something. I don’t need validation or feedback this badly.
I love that no one can just lazily vomit some half-baked bullshit into my guestbook (semi)anonymously. Even if I have to preapprove it before it shows up publicly, I still see it. I don’t even wanna see it in the first place.
Be a big person and use your email address. If you don’t want to, go make an alt or alias, or search for an anonymous email service. While putting all that effort in, maybe you’ll cool down in the meantime and think “Oh well, fuck it”. If not, make it a whole thing by logging in or opening that mail app and worry about the subject line and how to start the text. If it was going to be bullshit, be discouraged and stop it mid-process for all I care.
The good people that don’t go through the whole process sadly aren’t worth entertaining the bad people who would abuse easier communication methods. They’re collateral damage I’m willing to take. Being this “hard” to reach makes genuine people reach out because it’s worth it to them while the assholes get discouraged early on because their mood only allows quick throwaway nastiness that isn’t doable that easily via mail and feels stupid and not worth it to them.
No, you don’t get to farm engagement on a platform via some Twitter-esque quip off my post.
No, you don’t get to send in outrageous, rude, judgmental and drama-starting questions to a platform that makes me publicly answer them just to see me perform for you like a court jester.
I’m not your entertainment or some influencer building a parasocial following, so I don’t need “reactions” or “opinions” or to care for the reception of anything I post. I don’t have to interact with anyone who reads my stuff if I don’t want to!
I don’t have to care about discovery because I don’t care for being discovered. I don’t care for eyeballs on whatever I post anywhere. So much of what I’m criticizing in this post is based on this belief that I should be trying to attract people and then serve them - by interacting, by reciprocating, by opening myself up to their scrutiny, by being receptive to each stupid thought an awful person has about what I post, and by warping myself and only posting what they like. But for what? Why would I want to do that? Everyone trying to blow up and become famous hasn’t rotted my brain yet.
Interact with me on my terms. Why not? It has worked for all the other lovely people who I converse with via email.